Published 5:23 pm, Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The words are familiar to parties in many dysfunctional relationships, like the one between the federal government and states that have gone their separate ways on the failed and grotesquely expensive war on drugs.

Something has to give. The U.S. House recognized that with an unprecedented bipartisan vote last week to bar the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from raiding marijuana dispensaries in states that legalized pot for medicinal uses.

If the Senate goes along in drawing that line, it will establish a zone of sanity in an otherwise crazed patchwork of federal and state approaches to drug enforcement.

Setting the terms for Washington is important to the states, because the federal government can't come to terms with itself. President Barack Obama said this year that he thinks marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. Attorney General Eric Holder told his Justice Department to back off of bringing drug cases against low-level nonviolent possession suspects with no gang ties. And Holder set out conditions to stave off federal interference for the two states that legalized recreational pot sales.

At the same time, DEA chief Michele Leonhart has drawn a hard line, suggesting that marijuana should keep its Schedule One classification as among the most dangerous of drugs.

Lawmakers in both parties know that's not true, and more and more Republicans are willing to say so. Georgia's Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican and a medical doctor, told the House last week that pot has valid uses under a doctor's care and is "less dangerous than some narcotics that doctors prescribe all over this country."

Last week's measure was carried in Congress by a Republican, Dana Rohrabacher of California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana, in a 1996 vote. Now there are 22 states, along with the District of Columbia, with laws allowing access to marijuana for medical reasons.

We have long contended that Texas should join that list. Statewide surveys show widespread support now for medicinal marijuana in Texas — even support among most Republicans.

There are growing indications that Texas and its political leaders are weary of the counterproductive drug war and its bitter fruit: a state incarceration rate that ranks fifth-highest in the nation.

Gov. Rick Perry has added his voice to those looking for a smarter way, through decriminalization. That means different things to different people, but at the very least next year's Legislature should eliminate jail time for low-level, possession-only drug suspects. They should eliminate craziness in state laws, like the provision that has left a 19-year-old from Round Rock subject to a life sentence for a batch of brownies baked with hash oil, a marijuana derivative.

As the governor has said, states should have the latitude to craft their own drug laws. Given that latitude, Texas lawmakers should bring the state in line with the smarter framework that the public expects.